


If I'm Dead to You, Why Are You At the Wake?

by Breakingthetide



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:01:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27623770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Breakingthetide/pseuds/Breakingthetide
Summary: ''You ever have that dream? A miracle dream?''''He knocks at the door, says he forgot his keys and says he's sorry for being gone so long''.Or after Daisy Johnson is tortured by Nathaniel Malick in season 7, she drifts off and meets a ghost from her past, a dream she never thought would come true.
Relationships: Skye | Daisy Johnson/Grant Ward
Comments: 34
Kudos: 73





	If I'm Dead to You, Why Are You At the Wake?

**Author's Note:**

> This is loosely based off Meredith and Derek's reunion in season 17 of Grey's Anatomy.
> 
> This chapter, this one got me several times, you may want to get tissues.
> 
> I also recommend listening to High Hopes by Kodaline, and I Wish You Would by Taylor Swift, while reading.
> 
> Thank you for reading and commenting!

There’s a barn filled with hay, soaked in blood, her blood, as sweaty hands toss her onto the ground, Daisy’s mind a muddled dizzy mess. And she’s so weak, can’t remember the last time she ever felt so disconnected from her body, it’s as if Nathaniel Malick reached in and pulled her organs out one by one, drained her blood and put them in glass jars for her to see. The strong scarlet that made up Jiaying and Cal divided up into her veins, settling and swimming for the world to poke and prod, to fill foreign bodies and god knows what else.

Daniel Sousa asks a question, receives an answer, but their voices sound so far away as if she’s under water, drowning in the pain licking up her spine, clawing into her hands. Oxygen filters harshly in and out of Daisy’s lungs, burning her chest with each inhale, filling her mouth with blood that she can’t stop from choking on. For one second her mother fills her mind, and Quake wonders if this is how she felt once upon a time, when Whitehall tore her apart. 

If this is the universe’s idea of a sick joke, Daisy isn’t laughing.

Soft hands on her face as the door closes and it’s a kind of gentle she hasn’t felt from anyone in so long, a piece of tenderness in this nightmare as her brain starts to shut down, her body along with it as Sousa puts her head in his lap. She can hardly feel the material of his slacks brush against her cheek, numbness begins to spread and she’s been tortured enough times to know that she’s about to pass out, a blissful break from the horror Malick just inflicted upon her.

Fingers on her neck, Sousa starts telling her his story and his voice begins to fade, the smell of the barn, the feel of her own skin, the sound of her sharp aching inhales, the barn, the hay and blood, it all disappears in a cloud of black, and then nothing at all.

The last thing she hears is Daniel promising, ‘’we are going home Agent Johnson, you hear me? We’re going home, but you have got to fight’’.

*

Cool steel against her cheek, the familiar smell of jet fuel and Jemma’s perfume. Daisy opens her eyes expecting to be safe with the team on Zephyr One, but that’s not the aircraft that greets her when she sits up. Her body rests in the cargo bay of the Bus, somewhere she hasn’t been in years, a home she hasn’t seen in so long. Everything looks the same as the way it was left, Lola strapped down next to a Shield vehicle, the punching bag in the corner, the lab empty, the stair case vacant.

An ache unfurls in her chest as she stands and runs a hand along Lola’s hood, memories rush up and spill all over the floor causing tears to prick her eyes. The first time she rode in this car when Coulson promised a front row seat to the craziest show on earth, he was right, and now he’s dead. The version she has now is similar but it’s still not his body, the one that held her when she cried over her parents, the person that took her in when no one else gave a damn.

Coulson was a better father figure than Cal, and while his choices weren’t always right and she hated him at times, in the end she understood why he made them. Daisy pauses at the punching bag, that ache stuttering then throbbing, and she can’t go there. Can’t think about the hands against her own wrapping her knuckles, that smooth rare laugh, the way his chest felt against her back. It’s a familiar wound that has healed over time, and she doesn’t want to reopen it. 

Because if she does she’ll go back and forth on what could have been, should have been, in a loop over and over, and it won’t do any good to throw her heart back into simpler times where she should have made so many different calls. Seen instead of being blinded, understood instead of hurt, saved instead of pulling the trigger, held instead of shoved, that specific regret lies in the rubble of the Framework and she has no desire to unearth it.

To give life to what once broke her heart, when the man she thought she knew thrust a knife in her back and pulled, watched her blood spill all over the floor and left her to scoop up the parts of herself he didn’t taint, try to put herself back together. Stitch up her skin and bones, looked in the mirror to find scars and misplaced jagged sections of herself that she had to live with, there was no shaping those into anything better.

Daisy walks by the lab and smiles, thinks of how young she and Fitzsimmons once were on this plane, god it feels like a lifetime ago. They were different people here, bright and shiny, new and excited to start this adventure, having no idea it would leave them all scattered across space, that the road where all of this would end was filled with sharp rocks and monsters so dark most of their team wouldn’t survive.

Daisy walks up the stairs, lets the memories from years ago flow, because even though they’re painful, they made her into the person she is today, and she can’t regret all those things that led her here. Thinking she’s dreaming or she’s dead, this is a peaceful pause between reality, she heads up to the lounge area and sighs.

This was her first real home, her bunk lies a few yards away, the couches where movies were watched on down time, games and pranks were played, if she squints hard enough she can still see Fitz with shaving cream on his face, she, Simmons and Coulson laughing. Her eyes drift to those seats in the corner by the window, can’t stop the memory of _his_ smile against the sunny afternoon, her laugh drifting through the air.

It feels as if strangers walked these halls once, slept in the too small beds, ate Jemma’s terrible cooking in the kitchen. Daisy heads to her own bunk and jumps when it opens, the hula girl still on the shelf like she just walked out one day and is coming back to get it any second. The bed still made, a laptop on the nightstand, the picture of the beach she taped to the wall a few weeks before Shield fell. She heads to Jemma’s room next, then pauses at Fitz’s, her hand freezing against the door.

Thinks about one of the last things she said to him as he dug a scalpel into her neck, _‘’I’ll never forgive you’’,_ Daisy wishes she could tell him that she does, that she’s sorry she wasn’t there to save him. Doesn’t open that door or Coulson’s, not even May’s, can’t live with their ghosts here or in the real world, she does rest her forehead against May’s though and lets a few tears fall. It wasn’t supposed to end like this, with all of her team dead except Simmons, replaced by past and robot versions of themselves.

Taking a deep breath and wiping her face she heads back to the lounge area, wondering how long this dream is going to last and what’s waiting for her when she opens her eyes, Daisy freezes when the couches come into view and a body with its back to her is sitting in one. A tall frame with dark hair, she can make out a white shirt and bare arms that are so familiar, ones she hasn’t seen in so long. And then a voice says her name, breaking her out of the shocked fog. 

Then she realizes they’re saying _Skye_ , not Daisy, there’s only one person who would be calling her that, and he’s been dead longer than the time she knew him. Rounding the corner she comes face to face with Grant Ward, and this time he’s the person she remembers, the smooth hair, sharp cheekbones, that scowl on his face, no sidearm strapped to his hip though, and those eyes that kept her up at night on several occasions.

God, it’s been so long since she’s seen this version of him, he seems so innocent and young, the demons of his past on a leash, never letting the horrors of his childhood or what he went through with John Garrett show. Daisy wishes he would have so she could have helped him, if she could go back she’d tell him it’s alright, that everyone deserves a second chance, and amazing things can happen if someone believes in you, he would just need to let her in.

Daisy didn’t understand him back then but she does now, and if only he were really here and this wasn’t her subconscious dreaming him up from an abyss. Facing him, he’s wearing that half smirk, one leg folded over the other, looking the exact same as he once did when their team had its first mission together. Again, it feels as if other bodies went through that experience, all these moments in the Bus, like Daisy is stumbling on someone else’s life, someone else’s memories.

She can hardly remember what it was like living here, who she was before her powers, before all the betrayals, lies, bullets and blood. It’s the oldest story in the world; one day she was in her twenties living in a van searching for her parents, and here she is now almost thirty, so many scars between saying bang whenever she pulled the trigger of a gun, to saving the world. So many regrets piling up with bodies, so much love lost time and time again.

Daisy drifted aimlessly for a while after Shield fell, her parents died then Lincoln, then Fitz, Coulson and May. She cut her hair, dyed it black, then let it grow out then bleached it, because no one tells you what to do when you lose yourself, how to pick up the pieces of who you used to be off the ground. Now she knows after all the trauma and darkness, you can’t really be the person you once were, not after everything, not after death follows you and everyone close to you always ends up dying.

Holding on just hurts more, so you mold yourself out of the ashes of each tragedy because that’s what you have to do in order to survive, and ironically Daisy has become what she once hated Ward for. All he ever did was adapt and shape himself to every new situation, get out alive, and now years later that’s exactly what she does. She understood that during the Framework and it’s even clearer now as she faces him, they’ve always been two sides of the same coin.

‘’Hey Rookie’’.

Hearing the old nickname nearly makes her crack, the last time he called her that they were both very different people.

‘’Ward’’,

She breathes his name the same way she always has whenever he turns up in the most unexpected places.

‘’What kind of afterlife is this anyway?’’

He cracks another smirk, ‘’if this was purgatory I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be here with me’’.

‘’I wouldn’t bet on it’’.

It’s been a long time since burning hatred filled her where Ward is concerned, and with the help of time and the Framework, it’s easy to flow back into conversation with him, it feels almost normal.

Like they stepped off the Bus one day and have finally returned, ready to pick up where they left off.

Ward shakes his head, ‘’if there’s a heaven you’d be the one to find it’’.

Drinking in his planes of his face Daisy sits down on the coffee table across from him like she did so many times before, ‘’don’t think they’d let me in these days’’.

‘’I wouldn’t bet on it’’.

He repeats and she nearly smiles, ‘’I’m dreaming aren’t I?’’

‘’And you conjured me up out of everyone else, should I be flattered?’’

She’d forgotten his dry sense of humor, can admit now she’s missed it.

‘’No’’.

He studies her the same way she does him, eyes lingering on her hair, ‘’you dyed it’’.

‘’Thank the trauma’’.

‘’It looks good’’.

‘’Thanks, different from the last time you saw it’’.

Ward pauses for a moment then says, his head cocked, ‘’some things are still the same’’.

‘’No they’re not’’.

‘’You’re still Skye’’.

That wound he ripped open in her chest throbs, when was the last time anyone called her that anyway?

She can’t remember.

A part of Skye will always be buried with her mother, with Cal’s memories.

‘’It’s Daisy now actually’’.

It has bothered her more than she’d like to admit, that he died not knowing her real name, still thinking she was that girl on the Bus that he once knew.

There’s a brief moment of hesitation and then he adjusts like nothing happened at all, accepts her the way he always has.

‘’Well then Daisy, want to get that drink?’’

Her eyes grow glassy and Ward stands, offering his hand to help her up, and maybe because this isn’t real or she wants it to be, she takes it and it feels so right, so different yet not. His palm inside of her own feels like missed opportunities, wasted potential, and so many empty years where something could have bloomed, but instead turned to dust. The only other time he touched her like this was back at Providence where lies spilled from her mouth, and he believed in false promises, her lips on his.

They head to the bar which is fully intact, the glass not shattered, the bottles in one piece instead of broken like all their dreams. Ward pours whiskey and slides the bottle over to her, she sits on a bar stool and he stands. The past dancing between them and Daisy feels as if she could reach out towards that distance and physically touch it, hold it in her fingers and pull it apart, dissect and analyze it until every line is smooth, every piece of their ruined puzzle set and locked away, finally finished.

So she comments, ‘’you might have noticed I’m not punching or shooting you in the face’’.

Ward nods, ‘’it didn’t escape me, no’’.

‘’Would you believe me if I said I don’t hate you anymore?’’

He takes a sip of bourbon, ‘’no’’.

‘’You always did think the worst of yourself’’.

‘’I did terrible things Daisy, unforgiveable cruel things’’-

‘’So have I, hate to break it to you Robot, but you weren’t the villain in my story, no matter how badly I wanted you to be’’.

Sadness and sympathy swims in his eyes as he glances at the visible scars on her skin, ones that weren’t there the last time he saw her.

She’s about to say she doesn’t want his pity, but then he asks, ‘’what changed?’’

Since the last time they spoke, for him anyway, she was gloating over the fact that he’d be lucky if she didn’t try to kill him again.

That familiar guilt travels up her spine and she has to fight to push it down.

‘’Life. You never warned me how Shield could chew you up and spit you back out’’.

‘’Yeah they have a tendency to do that’’.

A confession slips past her lips that she’s never admitted aloud, ‘’wish you could have been there for everything’’.

Daisy glances at his chest and winces, hates to imagine what Coulson put him through on Maveth.

Ward holds a hand out like he’s going to squeeze her arm, then pulls it back, ‘’I’m sorry I wasn’t’’.

‘’Me too’’.

In the middle of the night when she couldn’t sleep, Daisy use to wonder what Ward would think of all this, how her life went and the team’s, if he would recognize them if he saw them now. If he would have stood by like everyone else when Coulson locked her in that lab when she first got her powers, if he would have fought on her side when she joined her mother against Shield. What he would have done when Simmons was trapped on Maveth, how he would have reacted at Daisy changing her name.

Would he be proud of the person she turned out to be? That thought is a left over habit from their rookie and S.O. days, and she wonders what he sees now when he looks at her. The way she carries herself, knows how powerful she is and how to wield it, a far cry from the girl that once sat on this same coffee table. Does he still see Skye buried underneath somewhere? Will she always be that bright eyed girl who kissed him in a storage closet when it felt like the world was ending?

How he would have handled Robbie Reyes, Aida, Ruby (she knows he would have helped try to save her) Kasius, Izel, Sarge and now Nathaniel Malick. The person he’d be at the end of all this, would he be the same Agent Ward she remembered if Hydra never happened? If things had been different and Shield gave him a second chance instead of leaving him on the rocks for the wolves, would they be together now? Would he be happy and healthy, fighting at her side like he probably should have been all along?

Would he have been able to save her from some of the darkness that seeped in? Could he have saved Fitz, May and Coulson from dying? How different would their lives be if he survived, or if he never left Shield at all? So many what-ifs used to keep her mind spinning, so many questions that she’ll never get answers to. All that’s left is regret and sorrow that she buried a long time ago, so much of Ward was wasted on bad blood instead of forgiveness that should have been offered.

Daisy feels the whiskey burn her throat when he asks, ‘’so what have I missed?’’ And it all pours out of her, so many things she’s kept inside, like she’s sitting back in confession, all the things she’s wanted to tell someone but couldn’t, everything that happened since he died and no one cared at all. What happened with Hive, when Lincoln died and how she handled it after, meeting Ghost Rider, the Framework, the fight that followed when she left it.

The drama in space and meeting Fitzsimmons’ grandson who became a part of the team, their wedding, Fitz dying then Coulson, Sarge wearing Coulson’s face as he terrorized them, then May meeting the same fate as Phil. Thanos destroying half the universe, and then recently what’s occurring now, the team traveling through time to save Shield. Ward takes all of this in with frustration and sadness in those whiskey eyes, the same haunting look on her face when she thinks about what has become of their team.

They were all so full of life once, happy here as a family, and now look at them, everyone is dead except Simmons and Daisy, tragedy after tragedy that should have never happened. Daisy doesn’t even realize she’s crying until Ward pulls her into his arms like he’s done it a thousand times, when in reality they only hugged once, and for her at the time, she was so full of hate and anger, disgusted at his touch. But now she holds him carefully, like he’s going to disappear any second.

Would the people who once lived here be proud of them? Would Skye with her long brown hair and sly comments like the woman she turned out to be? Would Ward hate himself? And if he were still alive in her reality, would Daisy forgive him? She knows she would, that he was a victim in all of this, and while she’s not justifying his actions, she understands him. All he needed was a chance, and instead he got four bullets to the chest and his heart stopped on an alien planet.

Daisy dries her eyes and stays in his warm embrace, it feels like home, like everything has been a bad dream and they’re back on the Bus, recovering from it all. 

‘’You were right you know’’.

She mutters after he whispers an apology for what she’s gone through into her hair.

‘’About?’’

His voice rumbles through his chest against her ear, she moves carefully to rest it against his heart, and flinches when a beat is absent.

‘’You said that someday I’d understand, and I do’’.

While she told a version of him this in the Framework, it’s nice to be able to tell him face to face.

He deserved to hear it, that at least one person in the world knew what he meant, what he lived through.

A sigh leaves him, ‘’I never wanted you to’’.

‘’I know’’.

They’re more alike than he ever wanted them to be.

‘’Sometimes I wish we never left the Bus, that we’re still up there with Coulson giving us missions, May on the stick, Fitzsimmons arguing in the lab, you and I’’-

She stops herself because she isn’t sure exactly what was going to come out of her mouth, and Ward leans back to look at her face, those amber eyes burning, smoldering.

He raises an eyebrow and she settles with, ‘’what do you think would have happened with us?’’

‘’Us is a strong word’’.

A smile breaks through, then a struggled laugh and he copies the emotions, the past open and exposed between them now.

‘’That depends, I think’’.

‘’On?’’

‘’If you would ever forgive me for what I did, I’m so sorry Daisy’’-

She cuts him off, ‘’I know’’.

‘’I never wanted to hurt you or anyone else’’.

‘’You were just trying to save Garrett, I know’’.

Surprise, disbelief and shock crosses his face, Daisy knows it’s because he never expected anyone to ever understand him or his reasons for doing what he did.

‘’I didn’t totally understand you before, how you were abused your entire life’’-

‘’We don’t have to talk about that’’.

‘’You just needed a chance and no one ever gave it to you’’.

One of the most horrific things she ever did was encourage his suicide attempts down in Vault D, she glances at his wrists now and sees only smooth clean skin, and relief fills her, some of that guilt disappears.

‘’I don’t think I deserved it’’.

Daisy remembers over hearing a phone call between Coulson and Ward once, how he confessed there wasn’t anything good inside him anymore.

Which is why she responds, ‘’yes you did, more than anyone’’.

He doesn’t agree, but it’s a moot point.

Daisy places her hands on his chest hoping to replace the memory of the last thing he saw, and says, ‘’you were a good man Ward, and I am so sorry I didn’t see it before’’.

She understood him too late, never reached out to tell him any of this while she still had the chance.

And now he’s dead, just like the rest of them.

A trail of graves has been following Daisy around for years.

It’s why she follows up with something she should have told him in the Framework, ‘’I forgive you, wish it wasn’t too late to tell you that’’.

Daisy has only seen him cry once before, so it’s a surprise now when tears fill his eyes, and he sighs like a huge weight has been lifted off his shoulders.

‘’It’s not’’.

He places a hand against her neck and smiles, ‘’I used to think I fixated on you because you were the first thing I ever wanted for myself, someone that Garrett and my family had no control over’’.

Her stomach dips, this is dangerous uncharted territory.

The last time they had an emotional conversation it ended with a kiss, then later on a head butt and venom filled words.

‘’I feel a but coming on’’.

The fingers against her neck flex and she doesn’t push him away like she once would have, his skin is warm and she’s felt so cold for so long.

Her life went from Spring to Winter so quickly, and it’s finally Summer here in this small stolen moment.

‘’But you weren’t just a fixation from my delusional brain, and god I’m sorry for being so selfish especially now’’-

‘’It’s okay’’.

His expression changes from nervous to elated, almost content and peaceful even, his eyes are clear and he’s looking at her the way he used to, before everything fell apart and shattered beyond repair.

And for one second she pretends she’s still Skye, they’re still on the Bus, and whatever he’s going to say is going to be the start of something beautiful, something epic.

‘’I think I loved you, and I was too afraid to admit it before, hell I don’t even think I knew how to love or what it was back then. But with you, it was like I was drowning and you held out a hand’’.

There aren’t enough tears for this, no amount of sadness will make up for everything they lost.

They could have been perfect, if she and the team, the universe weren’t so cruel.

And then Daisy realizes she never knew the depth of his feelings, how deep they ran, that they could have been something so much more than what they turned into.

‘’Ward I, I don’t know what to say’’.

He waves her off like it’s not important, like he didn’t just set a match to what she once thought he felt, that cold version of him she once knew.

‘’it’s okay, you don’t have to say it back, I know you never loved me’’.

She could have, if she gave him a chance, if time and broken trust and promises didn’t rip them apart.

It’s the word _loved_ that gets her, past tense, because she’ll never hear him say these words in her world.

Not ready to say it back, and maybe she never will be, Daisy asks, ‘’do you remember when we first met?’’

‘’When I brought you here’’-

‘’Kidnapped me’’.

‘’Same difference’’.

‘’I still can’t decide if it was the best or worst thing to happen to me’’.

All these years later, it’s something Daisy still struggles with.

He looks down at her and for some reason she forgot how tall he is, how she has to arch on the tips of her toes to stare directly into his face.

‘’It can be both, you can love who you are but dislike how you got there’’.

She wrinkles her nose at the old S.O. tone and calls him out on it, he grins sheepishly, ‘’sorry, habit’’.

He’s right, so much tragedy and death has followed her and Daisy is so tired of it.

She’s tired of losing the people she cares about.

‘’Right again’’.

Ward shrugs, ‘’I know what that feels like’’.

‘’If you could go back and change it, would you?’’

He doesn’t even hesitate, ‘’I’d tell Coulson exactly what was going on the second I stepped on the Bus, who I was, what Garrett was after’’.

‘’He wouldn’t have thrown you in Vault D back then’’.

Grant sighs, removes his hand from her neck, ‘’no, I don’t think he would have either’’.

Daisy looks around the vacant room and laughs without humor, ‘’everyone is dead except Jemma and I, how sick is that?’’

‘’If you’re going to blame someone’’-

‘’It’s not going to be you’’.

Ward puts his hands on his hips, ‘’I should have been there for them, for you, I’’-

‘’It’s not your fault what Coulson did’’.

A smile twists his lips up, ‘’isn’t it?’’

While Ward hurt them all a few times over, Daisy never thought he deserved to die for those mistakes, even when she shot him.

‘’No’’.

‘’I swore to protect you guys, I failed’’.

‘’We all did, none of us were there for each other when it really counted’’.

Daisy looks around the space she once considered home and crosses her arms sadly, ‘’I’d change so many things if I could, save Lincoln, save you’’.

‘’I’m sorry you lost him’’.

‘’Me too’’.

Ward says quietly a few moments later, ‘’I would have saved Fitzsimmons’’.

Her head snaps up at that, ‘’Garrett would have hurt you right? And killed them anyways no matter what you did, you gave them their best chance. I didn’t get that before, but I do now’’.

Ward runs a hand down his face, so much guilt in his eyes, ‘’I broke us, our team, all for a man who never gave a damn about me’’.

‘’You thought you were doing the right thing, I’ve been there too’’.

The scars her mother left will never go away.

Daisy gets a small flash of what could have been if they both made different choices, maybe they’d be in love now living together for years like in the Framework, maybe she’d finally find that piece of happiness she’s been chasing her entire life, the kind of love she’s read about but never personally experienced, no matter how bad she wanted to.

Her own words she spoke to Hive come back now, an echo in the bones of a place they once shared, louder than any silence.

_‘’I thought we had a future once’’._

Maybe they could have, if things went a different way, if there was healing instead of hatred.

Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe.

Empty words, empty promises that’ll never be filled, because he’s gone and so is the team and she can never get them back. Ward has been dead for so long she started to forget the shape of his smile, the exact shade of those eyes that always lit her blood on fire, what it felt like to have someone tear at the leather of your skin to soak in the softness underneath. But now she memorizes every line of his face and knows when she wakes up and the fight is over, she’s going to give him a burial sight, a tombstone, because no one should ever have to roam the earth without a final resting place.

‘’God Ward, how did we end up here?’’

He gives her a sad smile, shakes his head, ‘’I don’t know, too many wrong turns I guess’’.

‘’I’m sorry I didn’t’’-

He cuts her off and walks close again, chest brushing against her own, ‘’I think we’ve said that enough, I forgave you for it all a long time ago anyway’’.

‘’Me too’’.

The sadness blossoms into joy, bright against the sun coming through the window, grinning exactly like she remembers.

‘’I miss you’’.

Daisy can admit that now after all this time, he needed to hear it at least once.

‘’I miss you too’’.

The Bus rumbles suddenly and she sways, Grant catches her and she steadies, her head starting to ring.

There’s a surprising bit of panic in her chest as she realizes, ‘’I’m waking up’’.

Another voice, sounding far away and a lot like Simmons calls her name.

‘’You have to go back’’.

Ward’s face is calm, gentle even, as he gazes at her like he did once before, at Providence when she cupped his face and told him he was a good man.

Before she can say anything he’s hugging her, lips at her hair, and says, ‘’thank you’’.

Startled she melts into his arms that could have been a safe place in another life and asks, ‘’for what?’’

‘’This, now I know you didn’t spend all these years hating me’’.

‘’None of us ever did’’.

Tears fall down his cheeks at that and Daisy feels her eyes do the same when he bends down and kisses her forehead.

‘’Goodbye Ward’’.

He steps away as the Bus begins to fill with shadows once more and for a moment Daisy wishes she could stay, or bring him back with her.

But then he’s walking backwards and says, ‘’Fitz says hello by the way, don’t worry I’m taking care of him. I’ll see you around Daisy’’.

And then he’s gone, and the world turns black once more.

*

Daisy wakes to a flashing white light, her body enclosed in a healing module similar to what she was once put in after she was shot. And Daisy realizes with her breath fogging up the glass and her arms trembling, it wasn’t a dream at all, she finally got the closure Coulson denied her all that time ago, and her lungs feel lighter. The memory of Ward no longer burns when she seals it away, this time with tape and not super glue. Because he wasn’t this terrible irredeemable monster, he was an abused brain washed victim who was denied a second chance over and over again.

So she’ll continue to do just as he taught her, fight, never give up. Because, and even though sometimes she forgets, he was the one who trained her, the reason she became a Shield agent in the first place, and he was one of the first people to believe in her.

Daisy unlocks the module, stretches, and heads off to meet her fate.


End file.
